This topic is indeed perpetually distasteful, and one wishes that common sense would prevail, and that the entire discussion would disappear. Even to engage in a debate such as this offers the "other side" an appearance of credibility (no matter how preposterous their lies actually are, at a time when people are living longer than ever before).

And how could anyone regard the possibility that young women may finally be shedding their compulsion to starve, and instead embracing their naturally curvaceous figures, as anything other than wonderful?

However, since so many figures in authority--legislators, educators, etc.--have proved to be astonishingly susceptible to media brainwashing, and have set their policies accordingly, books such as these are regrettably quite necessary.

There is a tremendous irony about the mass media's part in promoting curve-o-phobia. The press envisions itself (and promotes itself) as a "public protector," a "whistleblower" on corporate manipulation, and on the abuse of the capitalist system. And yet in this instance, when the misery wrought by weight-loss profiteers is so blatant, when their manipulation of the public trust is so obvious, when an industry is so obviously causing needless physical suffering for North American women, the media not only turns a blind eye, but is even complicit in the practice, aiding and abetting the very worst form of corporate exploitation.

Never have the "situational ethics" of the media been so apparent. And undoubtedly, it is all undertaken because many members of the media share the thin-supremacist mindset that the weight-control industry promotes.

* * *

Still, aesthetics remain the best argument against diet-industry attempts at destroying feminine beauty. Just look at this enchanting new image of Barbara at Nordstrom, in a princess-like garment that seems like something out of a dream vision. It is one of the most timeless and feminine pieces that we have ever seen in the modern day, and particularly appropriate for a goddess who possesses the soft fullness of the Classical ideal.

Even the most pernicious lies are powerless against the Truth of beauty.